The Imani Center for Policy and Education has called for a comprehensive overhaul of Ghana’s procurement law to create a stronger, more transparent system aimed at preventing revenue leakages and ensuring better accountability.
Dennis Asare, Senior Research Associate at IMANI Africa, appealed during the IMANIFesto event on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, where an in-depth analysis of the manifestos of major political parties, including the New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Movement for Change, was conducted.
Mr. Asare emphasized that Ghana’s heavy reliance on single-source procurement, especially for high-value contracts, has introduced significant weaknesses in the procurement system.
Although single sourcing is legally allowed under certain conditions, it has increasingly become the default approach for awarding major contracts, raising red flags about the process.
He stressed that without a clear policy shift to curb this practice, Ghana risks compromising the integrity of its procurement system, thus limiting the effectiveness of public spending.
“When Imani did public procurement analysis, what we identified is that if you take all the highly financial value contracts, they are always or at all times, procured through single sourcing, which means that single sourcing is one of the popular ways that the government procures high financial value contracts and given that we still have challenges in our procurement system in terms of accountability, we need to make sure that we create a more robust and transparent procurement system to ensure that we address contract overpricing and things like the political clientelism that has bedevilled our public procurement sphere.
He also emphasised that the existing procurement structure requires modernisation and smarter monitoring strategies to effectively curb financial excesses and ensure that public funds are safeguarded.
He pointed out that Ghana’s procurement system is currently ill-equipped to handle the scale of oversight necessary to prevent misuse, particularly in cases of single-sourced contracts that bypass standard competitive processes.
He proposed that a revised Public Procurement Law should include provisions for an independent approach.
“The challenges within our public procurement system make it even more complex and very difficult and we will need a lot more smart monitoring if we want to achieve this even though it looks doable so that we guard against the overpricing.
“Review the Public Procurement Law to provide for an Independent Value for Money Office to scrutinise government procurements above a threshold determined by Parliament.”
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